Childs and DeSaussure in "Here & Now"

Transformer is thrilled to present:



May 10 – 24; May 31 – June 14

Focusing on issues of place, time, fragility, security and fantasy, this two-site exhibition features 17 artists creating large scale, site-specific installations and environments within Transformer's project space, and in three floors of the former Church of the Rapture building space up the street from Transformer at 1840 14th Street, NW.


Artists Participating in Here & Now include:

May 10 – 24
At Transformer (1404 P Street, NW): Jennifer Burkley Vasher (Placitas, NM)

At 1840 14th Street, NW (entrance on T Street, NW):

Kyan Bishop & Kate Hardy (Washington, DC)
Sonya Blesofsky (Brooklyn, NY)
Mandy Burrow (Arlington, VA)
Graham Childs & Lily deSaussure (Washington,DC)
Derek Cote (Richmond, VA)
Mia Feuer (Richmond, VA)
Lisa Kellner (Hanover, VA)
Jong Sun (Jay) Lee (Baltimore, MD)
Chris Moukarbel (New York, NY)
Amy Rubin (British Columbia, Canada)
Paul Shoemaker (Richmond, VA)
Jiny Ung (Washington, DC)

From Transformer's press release:

DC artists Graham Childs and Lily deSaussure's installations celebrate the
domestic relationship, its hardships and its rewards. By building structures that
designate place, the artists create a theatrical platform on which these concepts perform. They state about their work: “In this collaborative work, we explore the many facets of our domestic relationship. The structures we build are simulations of our “dream” sunroom in our apartment as well as a portrait of domestic bliss. The space renders our own vulnerability as it yields a dissection and investigation into the adversities of shared lives. The environment, devoid of walls,remains framed by architectural elements and relays limitations of boundaries. The household objects painted white raise questions of intended specificity. Amidst the furniture, windows, molding, plants and other objects,hang hand-embroidered pieces depicting moments from our lives preceding our current relationship. These images of personal memories stem from different places and times specific to each of us and are connected only
by thread and color. The color is representative of the integrity of our environment as a whole – it suspends the architecture and stands for evidence of us.”

See Transformer's website for special programming, more details, and exhibition hours.

“Chromophobia” at Meat Market Gallery

A Review of “Live to Tell” an exhibition featuring Lily DeSaussure and Graham Childs



By Lana Stephens

The Meat Markey gallery in Washington’s Dupont circle was busting at the seams on Friday night. The opening featured two exhibitions: “Live to Tell” by Lily DeSaussure and Graham Childs and “Naturing” by Sangbin Im and April Behnke. People navigated like rats through corridors and simulated rooms that seemed to both welcome and expel visitors.

I’m referring to an installation by DeSaussure and Childs. The white-washed interior within the gallery’s front room greets you as you enter the space. One must enter through a hanging door frame that places you in what appears to be a living room. The room is complete with crown molding and seven hanging windows, stripped bare of any curtains or blinds. The windows act as a barrier in place of actual walls from the rest of the gallery. An armature encloses the room forming a frame around invisible “open” walls. The room is decorated with household items and furniture. Dolphin figurines and frames adorn the shelves of a bookcase while a round dining room table inhabits the corner of the room. A deer head holds his perch high above, regally watching over the visitors that come and go, their skin tones and colorful jackets and scarves interrupting the stark whiteness of the room.

This is starting to sound a bit like a chapter I read from “Chromophobia,” where the author David Batchelor describes his experience of entering an entirely white home. He feels subordinate to the “aggressive” whiteness that seems insulted by his mere presence. I suppose there was a sort of aura to the installation room in the gallery, though I wish it were stronger. I felt odd being in the room, a bit out of place amongst the stark tranquility. I sucked in my breath when a gallery-goer spilled his beer on the floor of the room. His clumsiness was rendered obscene in the “pure” space.

I began coming up with stories in my head of how or why a room could end up like this. Perhaps the tenants fled, abandoning the now post-apocalyptic scene, smothered in white ash. The tea cups left on the table give it an eerie feeling, a feeling I wish was carried throughout the rest of the room. I wish there was white milk in the cups and white food on the table. I wish there were a blank newspaper folded on a chair. The white-washed plants are a nice touch however. The dolphin figurines bothered me though. There was something too generic about them. Maybe it’s because I hail from a tourist “beach” town where tacky sea life seems to invade every once respectable home. I suppose I wanted the white objects to be more personal so that the feeling of my intrusion was heightened to an uncomfortable state.



The room is not only an “environment,” it serves as an exhibition space from DeSaussure’s stitched drawings that hang, suspended in air on one side of the room. The pieces on display play a dual role; 1) decorating the domestic interior and 2) functioning as works of art that are for sale. Her work consists of multi-figural stitched compositions on paper. Lily uses embroidery floss in a painstaking process that it not only laborious, but requires quite a bit of skill, or craft. She stitches each mark, sometimes overlapping to create a more “worked,” layered surface. The compositions consist of what seems to be amiable past times between old friends and lovers. My only criticism of the three large stitched compositions is that they are not white on white. I realize white thread on white paper would be difficult to see, but the experience of being in a totally white room is also quite difficult. Call me biased, but I too, like the homeowners in Batchelor’s novel, am coming down with Chromophobia.


"Live to Tell" is on view at Meat Market Gallery until March 2nd.

Academy 2007

Congrats Graham Childs!

Academy 2007, The BFA/MFA Survey show
at Conner Contemporary has just been announced.

July 6- August 18th

C'mon c'mon

Come support our friends, writers and above all, talented artists. Geoffrey Aldridge, Cory Oberndorfer, Lily deSassure, and Graham Childs work available at Meat Markets Auction.

This Friday, 6-9 at Meat Market

Now On View

MFA Thesis Exhibit on the Third Floor
Katzen Arts Center

Marty Weishaar
Jenny Walton
David Waddell
Kelly Ulcak
Max Kuller
Rebecca Johnson
Ellen Ann Gallup
Thomas DeBari
Graham Childs

*reception held on May 5, 6-9pm

Diamanda Galas

Graham Childs at
St Valentine's Day Masacre at the Knitting Factory in NYC


Welcome to coolness. Diamanda while talented vocally and musically has a limiting effect. While this was not what I had expected from a tranny show, which was goth, I was disappointed that someone with Diamanda’s abilities was not utilizing them further and elevating herself above the newest flavor for the “cool kids” in New York City to chew on.
Overall it was a good experience and I’m glad I went. It’s just sad to see that possibilities of redefining images and stereotypes of beauty are put aside, and we are left with spectacle and oddity. This all brings up questions of sameness and individual identity but to be blunt what is individuality when you play into a genre of music and performance that is known for its stereotypes even when you are a seven foot tall transvestite lounge singer.

Investigation into Raiders of the Lost Ark

Graham Childs

Recently I had been asked why Raiders of the Lost Ark should be considered as an artistic work. Despite the commercial success, writing, cinimatography, directing, acting, and cultural impact that this film has had over the past twenty-eight years, I believe there is supportive evidence mostly in its underlining theme of personna. The concept of Indiana Jones’ persona is perhaps the greatest binding aspect of his life that makes him relatable to our own lives; in essence, Raiders of the Lost Arc is a story about storytelling itself.

As in Hamlet, Harison Ford also plays a man grapling with meaning, rightousness, and sin within not only his life but in the metaphor of our own lives. This occurs mostly from the perspective that Indiana Jones has a compulsive lying disorder or at least creatively elaborates the truth. This is most evident after he returns from South America, unsuccessful in his attempt to recover a golden idol. I believe that the true identity of Jones is uncovered here where he is a fumbling professor needing an excuse to justify his failures at his job. In effect, we are Jones’ students captivated in awe while Marcus, his boss, merely states to Jones in more or less words that he has heard it all before (Marcus does not like tall tales).

It is in this created personna of Indiana Jones that the viewer relates, not in the super human achievement or the prevailer of unbeatable odds but in the stretching of the truth to no end. This is perhaps one of our most common threads as foulable humans, the ability to exagerate and find excuses and to justify our own faults into our own existence; we make ourselves the heros of our own stories exactly as Indiana Jones has done for himself.

Now you might be asking yourself what kind of unbearable truth about oneself would a person need in order to justify the need for a story involving the recovery of a sacred Jewish artifact that the Nazis were going to use to conquer the world and by doing so proving that anti-sematism is morally more wrong than what Indiana Jones has done? The answer stems from the fear in Jones’ eyes when called on by the government after he’s finished teaching his class and he exclames to Marcus,”What am I, in trouble?”

...

The answer and more next week.

Iona Rozeal Brown and Zoe Charlton on race and ethnicity in a global art world

Graham Childs

February 2, 2007 at the Hirshhorn, DC Artists Brown and Charlton discuss their work. The discussion centers around black culture in the U.S. and the usage of this culture and its stereotypes in both Iona and Zoe's work and by the Japanese culture. This speaks to a larger area of aetheticsizing a race or a culture. Sampling and appropriation within their work were other topics that relied heavily on their definitions of both.

The artists were both elequent and rational as ill-prepared questions and statements were brought up. And I was personally impressed with the ability of both artists to position themselves in authoritive roles. This is not to say they are not authorities, but in a way that they take ownership of the subject matter of which they tell us their work is constructed from and emoting its ultimate content leave me very little room to question them at all.

This is not a criticism only an observation. I am, however, left with questions only as an afterthought. In Iona's work, she depicts Japanese people weearing black-face and other 'clack culture,' stereotypical clothes, hair, etc. Is she taking the side of 'it is wrong to aesthetisize a culture' because she has done the same to Japanese culture in her work? Is the difference between appropriation and sampling even relevant when the definitions that were given relate only to citability and ownership? Does it matter where that line is drawn or is this a tool to take more ownership by pointing out that you are not appropriating, you have recontextualized and made the content yours.

Overall, this was an exciting discussion that brought up many questions, what I feel as relevant questions in art today. The Hirshhorn will be having discussions in this format every Friday and recommend attending.